Socialist Revolution - Tumblr Posts

Revisionism to the revolutionary ideas of Vladimir is one of the greatest enemies of the proletariat, and can only work to strenghten bourgeois ideology, never forget that, prolet.

Whenever I'm studying Marxism (and that's quite a lot of times actually) I remember Marx's idea that Revolution can only take form through hate.

Of course, I know now it's a very specific form of hate and that it's pointed to a specific community of people but when I started learning about it, I often found myself rebelling at the notion of hatred as a conductive to Revolution.

I thought hate was too volatile, too savage to be trustworthy but as I grow older and see the world as it is I see myself tasting that hate — and it's hard to actually put into words but this hatred is not ugly and unpredictable.

This hatred is actually quite beautiful, it's not a firing blaze scorching down the earth but a burning fire cleansing a wound, it's born out of indignation and love for humankind. It's there because I love humanity so much I can't help but feel the indignation for what happens to us to my very core and I can't help but turn this into anger, into hatred against those I know are responsible for this.

I really think Marx was onto something with this besides the whole political and economic points he usually made.

I can't get over the thought that In Time (2011) should be called "Socialism for Dummies"

What a movie lol

Other possible names include:

Socialism 101

Socialism for children

Socialism to you, who can't understand anything if it's not drawn for you

That one film where Cillian Murphy is so hot in leather I almost forget he's a cop

That one film pro-socialism Hollywood actually let someone produce

That one film where Olivia Wilde is somehow Justin Timberlake's mom (which makes no sense but I'm here for it)

My TikTok has decided against my will that I'm a young American voter and can't stop sending me Kamala Harris election propaganda...

I need to go back to communist/socialist TikTok ASAP

Because if I don't I might start sharing my opinions on the lib feminism and weaponized racial identification to masquerade genocidal agendas and I'm too lazy to deal with the backlash even if I do have a small account

Gale and Revolutionary Hate

Okay, it's been a while since I last spoke about THG but I'll give it a try because I've been thinking a lot about this matter.

It's been a while since I saw someone on TikTok defending Gale because, if I remember correctly, he was somewhat of a true revolutionary. The person meant that Gale not only believed in the Revolution but also thought violence was justified for it and although I don't disagree with it - I do think violence is justified in the face of oppression - I think this person forgot a crucial part of what is needed in a Revolution: organizing.

When Marx first brought up the idea of hatred as fuel for the Revolution, what he meant wasn't scorching and annihilating the enemies but using the hatred (born out of indignation for our oppression) as motivation to organize. Organization means being able to get together, form a community, and with that be capable of resisting capitalistic oppression.

And that's exactly what is lacking in Gale.

Don't get me wrong, there is a tremendous anti-violence message in Hunger Games - although I attribute it more to the trauma Katniss goes through because of it (which is warranted) than any ideological point Collins could be trying to make. And that message is definitely not one to pass when the motives of the Revolution are fair but anyhow, the point is: message or no message, I still believe Gale isn't a good example of a revolutionary.

That's because Gale, although filled with an appropriate amount of hatred to fuel a Revolution, lacks another essential aspect of a revolutionary, one Che Guevara puts quite well: "The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."

That's because love is the thing that should be at the core of your hatred. Otherwise, we fall into a trap: in our hatred and need to destroy our enemies, we forget why we're fighting in the first place - the people who are oppressed by this enemy.

So the fact that Gale is willing to go so far as to explode the people out of the mountain on District 2, that he'd bomb the Capital with no care for the people who are there on the side of the revolution but unable to get to the other side of the fight, is what makes him a bad revolutionary.

Because his hatred isn't filled with the notion of community, he sees anyone who doesn't rebel loudly and proudly as an enemy, which simply isn't true. Not everyone will help the Revolution by making a fuss, or by fighting, not everyone can do that. Gale's unwillingness to understand so shows that his hatred isn't founded in any idea of community between the oppressed or love for the people he's a part of but actually is founded in personal offense of the Capital against him and the people he cares about.

Although that's a valid sentiment if your motivations are wrong, so will your actions.

And that's why I think Prim (in the films) and Peeta are the closest thing to a good revolutionary we've got there:

Prim understands there's a reason for violence, which she doesn't partake in not because she thinks it is wrong but simply because it's not her. More than that, Prim's capacity to empathize isn't blurred by her need to survive like Katniss's (understandably so, of course) so she is able to see the people who become collateral damage with kindness and openness that lack in Gale, for example.

Peeta is the same: he understands the necessity of violence but he won't partake in it unless it's the only way (which reminds me of Fidel Castro's quote: "Revolutionaries didn't choose armed struggle as the best path, it's the path the oppressors imposed on the people. And so the people only have two choices: to suffer or to fight"). Peeta chooses to be kind but his violence stems from the hatred this very kindness creates.

So no, I don't think Gale is a good revolutionary regardless of how The Hunger Games was written.

I really like how this is structured by the way lol (:

I’ve seen the Ursula K LeGuin quote about capitalism going around, but to really appreciate it you have to know the context.

The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. All is well.

Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead in the eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”

She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable”. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K LeGuin got up in front of an audience of some of the most powerful people in publishing, was expected to give a trite and politically safe argument about literature, and instead told them directly “Your empire will fall. And I will help it along.”